Gigatown geeks dominate NZ twittersphere

Politics, particularly of the dirty variety, were unsurprisingly popular topics for election year on the twittersphere surrounding New Zealand.

What may be surprising, for non-geeky Kiwis, is that Chorus's Gigatown social media campaign to promote ultrafast broadband has generated more locatable tweets than anything else in New Zealand in 2014.

While Gigatown finalist Nelson's hashtag #gigatownnsn was the most tweeted one during the year, according to data provided to NZ Newswire by the Twitter trackers at Trendsmap, Gigatown winner Dunedin's would have topped the nation's tweets as well if its twitter campaign hadn't been split into two hashtags.

Together they ranked fourth and fifth on the Trendsmap table of NZ hashtags for 2014 - behind hashtags for general political discussion and those sparked by Nicky Hager's book Dirty Politics, whose disclosures dominated the election campaign.

A separate Trendsmap analysis of Twitter accounts attracting the most New Zealand traffic shows a preponderant male pop star influence.

Only the New Zealand Herald and Warriors league team have made it in the top

10 alongside members of Australia's Five Seconds of Summer (5sos) and Britain's One Direction boy bands and Justin Bieber.

MOST POPULAR NZ HASHTAGS

1. #gigatownnsn

2. #nzpol

3. #dirtypolitics

4. #gigatowndunedin

5. #gigatowndun

6. #decision14

7. #mtvhottest

8. #gigatownwanaka

9. #gaza

10. #gigatowngis

SAMPLE OF OTHERS

16. #vote5sos

25. #mh370

34. #royalvisitnz

36=. #election2014

36=. #allblacks

TWITTER'S MOST POPULAR USERS IN NZ

1. @5sos

2. @nzherald

3. @niallofficial

4. @calum5sos

5. @real_liam_payne

6. @luke5sos

7. @michael5sos

8. @justinbieber

9. @nzwarriors

10. @harry_styles

SAMPLE OF OTHERS

11. @johnkeypm

12. @lordemusic

13. nzgreens

14=. @allblacks

20 @kimdotcom

Source: Trendsmap analysis of all locatable tweets and retweets in NZ.